Don't tell Alfred - Nancy Mitford

Don't Tell Alfred is the wickedly funny sequel to Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.

'I believe it would have been normal for me to have paid a visit to the outgoing ambassadress. However the said ambassadress had set up such an uninhibited wail when she knew she was to leave, proclaiming her misery to all and sundry and refusing so furiously to look on the bright side, that it was felt she might not be very nice to me.'

Fanny is married to absent-minded Oxford don Alfred and content with her role as a plain, tweedy housewife. But overnight her life changes when Alfred is appointed English Ambassador to Paris. In the blink of an eye, Fanny's mixing with royalty, Rothschilds and Dior-clad wives, throwing cocktail parties and having every indiscreet remark printed in tomorrow's papers.

But with the love lives of her new friends to organize, an aristocratic squatter who won't budge and the antics of her maverick sons to thwart, Fanny's far too busy to worry about the diplomatic crisis looming on the horizon. . .

Don't Tell Alfred continues the histories of the characters Nancy Mitford introduced in The Pursuit of Love.

'A comic genius'
Independent on Sunday

'Deliciously funny'
Evelyn Waugh

Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the infamous Mitford sisters, known for her membership in 'The Bright Young Things' clique of the 1920s and an intimate of Evelyn Waugh; she produced witty, satirical novels with a cast of characters taken directly from the aristocratic social scene of which she was a part. Her novels, Wigs on the Green, The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and The Blessing, are available in single paperback editions from Penguin or as part of The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford which also includes Highland Fling, Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. This edition of Don't Tell Alfred is introduced by author and columnist Sophie Dahl.